Linux Users of Victoria, Inc.

PLEASE NOTE CHANGE OF DAY DUE TO MELBOURNE CUP HOLIDAY

6:30 PM to 8:30 PM Wednesday, November 7, 2018
Training Room, Kathleen Syme Library, 251 Faraday Street Carlton VIC 3053

Speakers:

• Brian Salter-Duke, Computerbank
• Robert Bloch, Designing Open Democracy

Computerbank is a charity that aims to assist pensioners, students, unenployed people and others with a concession card to cross the digital and economic divide in Australia. We do this by selling low cost desktop and laptop computers to these people and assisting them to use them. Our computers use open source software (currently transitioning from Ubuntu 16.04 to 18.04). We are a self funded not for profit, volunteer run community group. We rely on donations of computer equipment of all kinds, which we use as above, or recycle or sell on Ebay. Our only income is from sales in the shop and sales on Ebay. We rely largely on volunteers to build computers for sale or sell them in the shop. We do however employ a manager to supervise and train volunteers. Volunteeers work on Wednesdays, Thursday, Fridays and Saturdays. The shop is open on Friday (10 am to 5 pm) and Saturday (12.30 to 5.00 pm).

Computerbank was founded in 1998 and has been in its present accommodation in West Melbourne since 2002. Unfortunately we are now looking for new accommodation as we have to move before March next year.

Designing Open Democracy is a group for any tech professionals or political experts (or ordinary citizens) interested in discussing in a detailed way the potential opportunities for reforming existing democratic institutions; from local organisations to national governments around the world through technology or other practices. Our aim is to improve democracy: we think this can best be done by providing a forum for discussing democracy proposals, ideas, and to foster collaboration between people who would like to participate in democracy reform.